Woman Dressing 1960

Rudolf Láng made this painting, Woman Dressing, using oil on board. I love the way Láng’s handling of the paint gives this image a real sense of immediacy. It’s all about the gesture, that kind of fleeting moment. It feels like he's figuring out the image as he goes, with these colors – that burnt umber and the saturated blues - laid down with a kind of intuitive confidence. Check out the blue lines at the bottom. They're applied with such energy, almost scribbled, like an afterthought, but they ground the whole composition. The rest of the paint has a kind of translucent quality. It’s not overworked, but it's really evocative. I think of artists like Bonnard when I look at this. There’s a similar intimacy, that sense of peeking into a private moment, captured with a kind of painterly shorthand. And, you know, art’s not about answers, it's about asking interesting questions.